The thing about thawing taking longer though is... I can walk away from thawing rats. They aren't going anywhere, I stick them in a cup of cold water and go do something else that needs doing for 20-30 minutes, then come back and spend another 5 heating them until they temp correctly (I always temp with a gun to make sure they're defrosted and heated through). Then I just toss the heated dead feeder in and the girls tag 'em as soon as they get a bead on 'em.
So honestly it's about 25 minute prep and then less than a minute per snake (my girls take them just that fast, but you can usually tell through experience if the snake is going to take that day or not, so it doesn't take 15-20 minutes) another 5 ish for clean up (washing the feeding tray, tongs, putting stuff away, etc.) and I'm done.
VS properly fed live as deb described in which you have to fed and water the feeder first, take it into the room to scent it and get the snakes hyped for 30 minutes, watch each snake kill the rat (which granted, doesn't take that long once the snake does strike and coil; I had to watch Strudel when she was still on live and they are efficient at what they do, but it still took longer than tossing in the dead and heated feeder) remove the rat after 15 to 20 minutes if the snake hasn't eaten it, and then you've got a live feeder at the end of the day that you need to continue to house and feed and water (if someone else doesn't take it)...
Yeah, I'm not entirely convinced that live feeding is all that quicker.
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